Excerpt of Make Your Move by Samantha Hunter

"Oh, man, you are so hot," Jason Kravitz—Dr. Jason Kravitz—whispered in Jodie Patterson's ear. His hand rested on her shoulder almost shyly as they walked up the stairs of the old brownstone together.

He wasn't the kind of guy she usually dated, but he was cute
in a geeky professor way, with his close-cut brown curls,
his serious blue eyes and wire-frame glasses. He'd mentioned
playing racquetball, and his physique was nice enough, she
was pleased to note.

Mostly, Jodie got a kick out of how attentive and grateful he was. A bio engineer at Northwestern, what woman wouldn't be flattered when Jason told her he'd never been out with a woman as sexy as her?

It was an ego stroke, sure, but why not?

I'm gonna rock your world, Dr. Kravitz, she thought with a secretive smile as she impulsively pushed him up against the wall near her apartment and found his lips for a kiss. It was a preview of what she wanted to happen once they were inside the door.

He was a decent kisser, thank God, and from what she could
tell of the boner inside his conservatively cut dress pants,
they were in full agreement about how this evening was going
to end.

Jodie looked down the hall where a door shut, though she
didn't see anyone, and stepped away. She'd lived in this
apartment building for six years and knew most of her
neighbors. On top of that she was a local businesswoman with
a reputation to protect. She liked to get wild, but she
wasn't stupid.

She felt Jason watching her as if he couldn't bear to take
his eyes off her. It was nice, compared to the string of
smooth operators she'd dated recently, guys who liked to
pretend they were too cool to stroke anyone's ego but their own.

She winked naughtily and crooked her finger. This was going to be fun.

They'd had a pleasant enough evening. He'd sprung for a very
nice dinner and a show, and she'd cut him some slack on the
social graces. After all, Jason was a scientist. A wealthy,
nice looking and—she could tell—a well-endowed nerd.

Jodie knew that social dexterity was not the strength of the
scientific male. Her best friend and business partner Dan
Ellison had taught her that. Dan was a good friend and the
one guy on earth she could trust and be herself with, but he
was still a scientist. A true-blue genius, actually, a
teenage college student, Dan was going for his second Ph.D.
when Jodie had just hit her sophomore year.

She'd be lying if she didn't admit—at least to
herself—that Jason was definitely fulfilling a little
fantasy she'd held on to for a while.

Back in the day, more than once, Jodie had thought of what
it would be like to sleep with Dan, too. He was sweet, and
really good-looking, in spite of his refusal to part with
his glasses and somewhat haphazard academic mode of dress.
She'd given up buying him beautiful designer shirts and so
forth for holidays because he never wore them, though he
admired them as gifts. Dan was just…Dan.

Maybe something would have happened in those early days if
she'd made a move, but when they opened a business together,
the door that led to sex was closed firmly shut. As time
went on, she also didn't want to risk destroying the one
real relationship she had with a truly decent guy. There was
a world full of men to bring home for a night, but really
good men were a rare find. Dan was a really good man.

Opening her apartment door, she led Jason in by the tie and
when the door shut, she turned on a low light, sliding her
coat off and hanging it in the closet before taking his.
Their hands touched, and her heartbeat picked up a little.
The territory south of her belly button started to get that
warm tingle of anticipation that signaled good things on the
horizon.

Jodie loved everything about sex. She loved seduction and
men's bodies and everything that physical coupling had to
offer. It was fun, energizing, and she was very, very good
at it. Knowing that gave her a sense of control. She could,
with little effort, have any man she wanted. And usually did.

Tonight, that was enhanced by Jason's shy approach. She
liked how he wasn't all over her the second the door was
shut. He just kept staring at her as if she was the best
thing since pink Popsicles.

Jodie grinned. She was an old-fashioned girl in one way: she
liked a real man in her bed, not a battery-operated boy toy.
Call her a purist, but there really was nothing like the
real thing and she didn't settle for facsimiles.

"You make yourself comfortable. I'll be right back,"
she said with sexy promise in her voice.

Her weekend was off to a perfect start. Sex and fun on
Friday night to ease into the weekend, followed by busy
Saturday and Sunday mornings at the bakery, and then Sunday
afternoon and Monday off to relax and have time to herself.
It was a routine honed to perfection over the years. She'd
worked hard to get her bake shop, Just Eat It, off the
ground. Four years later, now that she was doing well, she'd
taken on help and made sure she had time to enjoy life, too.

"Hurry back. Please," he said it so politely, so
focused on her and still visibly erect, that she couldn't
resist kissing him one more time. She enjoyed it when her
lovers were this eager, and begged a little. Taking in his
moony-eyed gaze she hoped her science guy wasn't
tenderhearted. This was strictly a one-night thing, and
she'd make that clear in some gentle way before they hit the
sheets. It was better to be honest up front, then everyone
could relax and enjoy.

She moved into her bathroom, washed up quickly, spritzing on
some perfume and picking a black lace gown from her lingerie
closet. Something told her Jason was a traditionalist. She
took her hair down from its knot and shook it out, approving
of her image in the mirror.

On her way back out to the living room, she saw her cell
phone light up on the dresser where she'd left it. She
looked down to see who had left her a message.

Dan!

Without hesitation, she picked up the phone and called her
voice mail to check.

"Jodie? You there? It's me, Dan," he said in the
message, as if she wouldn't recognize his voice. "I'm
back a few days early, and the guy subletting from me isn't
out of the apartment until Sunday. I'm at a hotel, but call
me on my cell if you want to have dinner or get together.
I'll be up late, so don't worry."

She smiled, holding on to the phone for a second. She hadn't
realized until she heard his voice how much she missed him.

Dan was a very busy guy. Since college, he'd been in high
demand as a speaker and guest lecturer. He still did that
now that he was a professor at the university—when he
wasn't working on government contracts associated with the
department's high-security experiments. When someone had a
gift like Dan's, everyone seemed to want a piece of him.
He'd been teaching less in recent years, away more often
than not, so they didn't hang out as regularly as they had
in the old days, although they tried to spend time together
in between his varied engagements.

Those speaking engagements had always paid quite well, as
did his many publications. As his college years had been
completely funded by a scholarship, he'd been accumulating
quite the bank account since he was young.

Not so for Jodie, who'd worked her way up and, even with her
scholarship, had worked all through college to be able to
afford the necessities. However, Dan was never arrogant
about his accomplishments, and he never acted as if he was
better than everyone else. Quite the opposite, when she'd
met him, he was a bit of a loner.

They became friends, and eventually he became her silent
partner, bankrolling the bakery at the beginning. He'd also
developed their "secret ingredient"—a cookie
icing that held pheromone additives that enhanced female
sexual attractiveness. In other words, eat a cookie or two
with that icing on it, and any woman would attract men that
she was also attracted to, releasing the pheromone along
with the usual chemical something-or-others that all
combined to create lust.

Dan had explained how it all worked—in painful
detail—and Jodie had listened, though she only
understood about five words of what he was saying.

Dan's invention was the thing that had put her on the map of
the Chicago specialty foods scene with her Passionate Hearts
cookies—for adults only, of course. After a few
write-ups in food and women's magazines, she was even
considering a Web site and online sales.

To do that, she'd have to hire another baker, but she needed
to make sure she was hiring the right person, and had been
stalling. When it came to her business, she was nowhere near
as daring as she was in her social life. She'd been meaning
to ask Dan his opinion; maybe he would like to conduct
interviews with her.

Jodie was a social butterfly and Dan was more solitary. She
dated a lot of guys and was sexually and socially
adventurous, enjoying going out with her friends and
traveling when she could. Her female friendships were the
cornerstone of her social life, though. After growing up
with a dominating father and watching her mother suffer for
it, as did Jodie, she had no desire to attach herself to any
man for longer than a night.

Men were just for sex, and none of them seemed to mind.

Dan was the exception to the rule, in a platonic way. He'd
never made a move on her, and for that, she was grateful. He
was as dedicated to work as she was, and that, as well as
their college friendship, was their glue.

Dan had dated three women that she knew of, one in grad
school and two later, fairly seriously, but he was
ultimately married to his work. Not many women could put up
with his frequent absences and the times when, even though
he was sitting right there with you, his mind was off
solving some problem.

The women he dated tended to be as smart as he was. Jodie
knew she didn't compete in that area. She wasn't stupid, but
she was hardly on Dan's level when it came to brain power.

Dialing quickly, she called his cell, which she knew by rote.

"Jodie," he greeted her warmly on the second ring.
The same surge of comfort and happiness overcame her, too,
hearing his voice.

"Dan, I'm sorry, I just got your message. I was,
uh—" she said, glancing toward the front room
where Jason waited.

"Out on a date, yes. It's Friday night. I'm sorry. I
remembered just as soon as I left the message. I'm a little
bleary on what day it is. They've all blended together
lately. Who's the lucky fella?"

"Um, just a guy. Actually, um, he's…"

"There. I understand," he said easily. "You
didn't need to call me right back."

She smiled, shaking her head at how he finished her
thoughts. They'd been friends for that long. Suddenly the
sexy night she'd had planned with Jason didn't seem so exciting.

"It's been a while," she said, letting the black
gown fall to the floor and yanking open a drawer, grabbing
some underwear, yoga pants and a tank top. She dressed as
she was talking. "How long are you home?"

"I'm teaching, so I'll be here for the year this time.
Wanted to get home a few weeks before the semester started
to get ready. Didn't I tell you before I left?"

"Nope," she said, though there wasn't any blame in
her tone. She was used to him forgetting details like that.

"Listen, there's no hurry. Go enjoy your date."

She paused, a little ding of hurt around her breastbone.
Didn't he want to see her, too? But he sounded tired. That
had to be it. Dan didn't do subterfuge. If he didn't want to
see her, he'd say so.

"Are you okay?"

"Braincloud," he said wearily, and she grinned, understanding immediately. "Braincloud" was the inside joke they shared after watching the movie Joe Versus the Volcano to describe the complete fog and exhaustion Dan suffered when he came out of his work-saturated life.

Dan worked with such intensity. In college, he'd get so
stuck in a project that he'd forget to eat, sleep, or to
even leave his room. Once, he'd stayed in his room for so
long working out a problem that the people in adjoining
rooms thought something was terribly wrong and called her,
the dorm student rep, to check it out.

He'd barely noticed when she'd gotten security to open the
door and they found him amid a forest of books and papers,
his attention completely tuned to his work. He hadn't eaten
for two days, and Jodie had taken it upon herself from then
on to bring him food when he was working.

Eventually, it became a ritual. She'd come to his lab or his
dorm room with food and they'd share a break. She made him
laugh, and he helped her get through three years of required
math for her business degree. She baked him things all the
time, and it had been his idea for her to open a bakery.

When other guys were trying to find the best way to get into
her pants, Dan had just enjoyed her company and never asked
for more. When she'd been turned down by one bank after
another to start her business, having a weak credit history
and no rich parents to back her up, Dan had stepped up and
loaned her the money. He'd had plenty saved and had been
collecting money from patents and other work for years.

It paid to be a child genius, and he was more than generous
in sharing with Jodie, no questions asked. Later, when he
developed the icing formula, she signed him on as partner.
Even though she had been paying back his loan, it was only
fair that he share in her profits.

She'd been a little surprised, but pleased, when he accepted.

"You haven't eaten, have you?" she said, knowing.

"I'll call room service, promise. Listen, you have
someone waiting—you have fun," he said, starting
to hang up.

"Wait. This guy, you know, it isn't important. I don't
think we were clicking anyway," she said, with her
fingers crossed, just in case. "I haven't seen you in
forever. I'll be there in an hour with a pizza. Where are
you?"

He told her, and she called in the order for their favorite
deep dish, wondering how she'd let Jason down easily. It
wasn't fair, getting the guy all worked up and then fleeing
the scene, but she wasn't in the mood anymore. She'd make it
up to him another time.